Crimson Tide (The Crying Woman)

I could tell two things about my fiancé Valerie as she ran down the descending walkway to my car. One, she'd dressed hurriedly—she was pressing her little purse to her abdomen as if the key to holding her virginal white ensemble together; and two, she'd been crying. In fact she still was.

"What's the matter, darling?" I asked, as she climbed inside.

"Just drive," she sniffed.

I waiting until we were outside the familiar confines of her parents' subdivision to try again. At a red light I reached over and put my hand on her bare arm. She was blubbering again.

"What happened, darling?"

"Oh, you know..."

Traffic was moving again. "I don't know. Tell me."

Valerie exhaled, audibly. Straightened her back inside seatbelt's crosswise confines, wiped her eyes a last time and said, "Daddy found my birth control. He found my hiding spot."

"So?"

"So," giving me a look. "You know how he feels about those things."

I knew a lot about my future father-in-law. I knew, for instance, that Dr. Spence resided somewhere in the mythical 1950's—Ozzie and Harriet Land. I knew that he thought a woman's place was in the home and that he opposed both sex before marriage and all forms of birth control. That he was a deacon in his fundamentalist church and that he stood adamantly opposed to just about every social advance, from civil rights to women's rights to gay rights, that had occurred over the past 50 years. All you had to do was look at him—what with his close-cropped white hair and stony, self-righteous, puritanical blue stare—to know everything about the man.

I knew one other thing about Dr. Spence: he detested me. I was, to him, an inferior species. That's the reason, whenever I picked Valerie up, I remained in my car. Her father didn't want me on his doorstep, let alone in his vestibule. Nor did I want to be there. Dr. Spence and his timid wife didn't even know Valerie and I were engaged. It was a secret. Our plans were to soon run off and get married in a simple civil ceremony and then present "the deacon" with a fait accompli. Fuck him.

How such a creep had produced such a lovely, modern, (secretly) liberated daughter was a mystery to me. It certainly wasn't due to his genes.

"What did he do when he found 'em?" I asked Valerie.

"Oh, you don't want to know. I don't want to talk about it."

I reached out to my fiancé again. Tears were welling. Again. "Tell me."

Valerie raised her window. The male driver of the car next to us at the light was looking over at her. "Can you put the air on?"

"Sure," I said, raising my own window. Was the man staring at Valerie because of her simple beauty or, out of curiosity, because of her tears? The Crying Woman. I pressed the A/C button. It wasn't hot outside today but it wasn't cool either. It was borderline. "What did Mark do to you?"

Mark Spence. Future father-in-law. DOCTOR Mark Spence. Though what he'd done to earn a doctorate beat me. Probably received it from the Bible College he attended back in the day. I could only guess what his thesis had been about. The chemistry of turning water into wine? Creationism? Man and dinosaur—a harmonious coexistence?

Valerie was looking at me through her tears. She seemed surprised. In person, of course, I only ever addressed her father as "Dr. Spence."

"It's good to see you again, Dr. Spence."

"Hope you've been well, Dr. Spence."

"Congratulations on you and the missus on your anniversary, Dr. Spence."

Valerie nodded. "It's been a long time since the last time. Nearly a year, I think. Before I met you. Or right when I met you. He only ever does it in extreme circumstances..."

I was still doing doubletakes as I attempted to keep my car in its narrow lane. "Christ, Valerie, you're 24!"

Another nod. "I know. Tell me about it. But I'm still his daughter and I still live under his roof."

"We're about to change that," I said defiantly.

"I know. And he hates that. Hates it!"

"Hates me."

Valerie didn't deny it. Why bother with the obvious?

"What do you mean?" I asked. "He literally put you over his knee?"

"Yeah. I was in my bedroom getting dressed. To go out. And he burst in holding my birth control pills. Shaking them in midair. He tossed 'em on the bed, said something about it's all because of you..."

Valerie shook her head. "No. I was in my underwear. He came in without knocking. After he...yelled at me for a minute about my birth control pills he sat down on the edge of my bed and called me over and said, 'You know what this means...'"

"What did it mean?"

"I had a spanking coming! He used to spank me all the time. Not so much lately..."

"He spanked you on the bed?"

"He had me lay across his lap. First he had me pull my panties down. Then I lay across his lap."

"Christ! Nude?"

I swallowed. Something. Not sure what it was but it seemed to have the size and slimy texture of a tree frog. The ones that sometimes cling to a backyard window at night, heart visibly beating against the glass. Drawn by the light, I guess. Drawn by the incomprehensible mystery of what's inside. The kind of frogs we dissected in biology class, their sticky, round, splayed toes held down by pins. Their hearts still beating. Racing with fear...

"Don't swear," Valerie said. "Please?"

"I'm sorry but—" I recomposed myself. I was having visions of my fiancé's beautiful pale ass. A firm hand raining down on it, a rhythm. A redness rising... "I was only—"

"I'm so sore I can hardly stand to sit."

I hit the brakes. My apartment wasn't all that far away. We were just heading away from it, that's all. I only had to switch lanes, make a u-turn...

"Forget dinner," I said. "Let's go back to my place. I want to see what he did to you."

"I told you what he did."

"I know but I want to see for myself. How long did he spank you for?"

Valerie shrugged. "I don't know. A long time. I was sobbing at the end..." She straightened her back again, wiped her tears. "A hundred blows?"

I was in the lefthand turn lane, waiting for a light. I'd managed to suppress my blasphemy this time, however.

"What're you doing?" Valerie asked.

"Going back to my place."

"WHY?"

The light had changed. I cranked the wheel hard to the left. "I want to see for myself."

"I don't want you to see me right now. I told you," she pointed out the windshield. "My bottom is as red as that traffic light."

"A hundred blows?"

"Who knows? I don't remember. I lost track. Daddy wasn't counting. It was just... 'Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad!...' One buttock then the other. Over and over. I was sobbing at the end. Pleading with him."

I glanced to my right, wondering if Valerie, by chance, was looking down at my lap as I drove. Did it show? My uncontrollable erection? It wasn't my fault. I couldn't help it. "Pleading with him to stop," I said, filling in the blank.

We would order a pizza, breadsticks and side salads. And a two-liter of Coke. I never drank in front of Valerie. She didn't approve.

I was already thinking about these mundane luxuries of life as I pulled out of my fiancé. She hadn't lied about the condition of her poor ass, as we U-turned our way back to my second-floor apartment. The whole wide expanse of it was as red, ironically enough, as a stoplight. Or a faded, somewhat dayglo-ish stop sign. Poor girl...

Valerie lay on my bed on a stack of two pillows, face-down, legs spread wide. I was blessed. My beautiful, if somewhat amorphously-bodied, fiancé, loved it up the ass. She claimed—I didn't know either way—there was nothing in the Bible prohibiting anal sex except between two men. That was onanism.

No, wait. That's masturbation.

Anal sex was sodomy. Sodom and Gomorrah. Right?

The first time we did it, at Valerie's suggestion, I was shocked at how generous her hole was. She was no virgin back there—though she resolutely refused to ever talk about previous boyfriends, previous lovers.

"Why do you want to know?"

"I don't. I'm just asking."

"Well don't. It's private. I never even kept a diary. What if daddy ever discovered it? He'd..."

I rolled my eyes. Daddy. In the final analysis it always came down to daddy. Sometimes I wondered what I was getting myself into with this woman. But then we fucked—vaginally, anally, both, whatever—and everything righted itself again.

During anal sex, in this typical, pillow-elevated position, Valerie's hands always found their way to her lips' swell, her clitoris. It was, technically I guess, onanism but she pleasured herself anyway as I fucked the wide, deep hole between her marvelous cheeks. Pale, usually. Stoplight-red tonight. The orgasms she gave herself, with my anal assistance, far exceeding anything I was ever, ever, able to give her vaginally, on my own.

"OH!"

She even swore. And worse, blasphemed:

"OH MY FUCKING GOD!"

The walls shook, like at Jericho.

After sex this night in my apartment—where else?—even as my stomach growled I insisted on rubbing something on the fire-red buttocks I'd just parted. It was only a generic brand of skin lotion but, I hoped, it would be soothing.

Soothing for me.

Soothing for...

"I won't ask why you keep some kind of sissy skin cream in your cabinet, like a girl. Like my daughter," Dr. Spence said. As he nevertheless eased it into the burning red of my buttocks, which his stout deacon's cock had just spread. Spread, penetrated to the sometimes painful max, and inseminated. "And I won't ask why your asshole is so big, faggot."

"I—"

"Marrying my precious daughter? When you're a closet faggot? And love it up the ass?"

Dr. Spence gave my creamy red ass a final slap and backed away, head shaking. "What is she getting into?"

I rotated my body off of the pillow stack and came to sit on bed's low edge, my face at the same level as the deacon's spent cock. He had a beautiful one, I had to admit. Circumcised, of course. When engorged it was magnificent. Pink. Long. Curved. Thick. A real mouthful. A real assful. I would have gladly dropped to my knees and submissively sucked it again but he backed away.

Oh, daddy!

He was getting dressed. Dr. Spence still wore his wristwatch. He glanced at it from an exaggerated, short-sighted distance. "Good. We haven't missed the kick off. The game's about to start. Go put it on."

"Tell you what," Dr. Spence said, as I exited the bedroom, his potent load deep inside me. Locked there. "I'll give you a pair of my daughter's dirtiest panties if you'll," he pointed, "meet the pizza guy just like you are now. Naked. Your ass red."

"Dr. Spence," I said, still looking back, the livingroom TV blasting some kind of religious TV show he'd had me put on. I changed the channel, gladly. "No disrespect but I've seen your daughter's panties plenty of times..."

"Not like this you haven't. And after you tip the pizza delivery guy I want you to turn and show him your red ass. Bend over. Make sure he sees it. Understand? Dirty. Put the game on."